Strategy for storing supplemental data alongside imported data

Question

I have ran into this problem a few times and I am wondering what other people are doing.

When I am creating a database, sometimes I have to import data into a table

Answer 1

Here is a SQL Server 2008 merge statement that I came up with to help me with my current situation:

MERGE INTO dbo.Sections as S        -- Target
USING dbo.SectionsStaging as SS     -- Source
ON S.Id = SS.Id                     -- Join
WHEN MATCHED THEN                   -- Record exists in both tables
    UPDATE SET
        TermCode = SS.TermCode,
        CourseTitle = SS.CourseTitle,
        CoursePrefix = SS.CoursePrefix,
        CourseNumber = SS.CourseNumber,
        SectionNumber = SS.SectionNumber,
        Capacity = SS.Capacity,
        Campus = SS.Campus,
        FacultyFirstName = SS.FacultyFirstName,
        FacultyLastName = SS.FacultyLastName,
        [Status] = SS.[Status],
        Enrollment = SS.Enrollment
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN               -- Record exists only in source table
    INSERT ([Id],[TermCode],[CourseTitle],[CoursePrefix],[CourseNumber],[SectionNumber],[Capacity],[Campus],[FacultyFirstName],[FacultyLastName],[Status],[Enrollment])
    VALUES (SS.[Id],SS.[TermCode],SS.[CourseTitle],SS.[CoursePrefix],SS.[CourseNumber],SS.[SectionNumber],SS.[Capacity],SS.[Campus],SS.[FacultyFirstName],SS.[FacultyLastName],SS.[Status],SS.[Enrollment])
WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE THEN     -- Record exists only in target table
    DELETE;

Good stuff!